Derek891

Good point Alan. Do you think opening a command prompt and running "sfc /scannow" would reveal any missing system files and fix them? Might be worth trying before attempting another clone.

Cleaning duplicate files is only slightly less dangerous than standing in the middle of your living room and attempting to juggle two open containers of gasoline and a sparkler. Unless you possess great skill, either can end in disaster.

If it's Windows 7, the links are here: http://www.w7forums.com/threads/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads.12325/ Digital River is authorized by Microsoft to make the Win7 ISOs available for download; if it's Windows 8, then it's a matter of revisiting the Microsoft store. Either way, as long as you have a valid activation key, you shouldn't have any problems. Probably the best approach is download the ISO, verify the image, then burn it to DVD (or USB), and have it ready to go. Then try using the restore point. Reinstalling Windows is only slightly less painful than a root canal, just ask someone who knows.

I feel the same way. After my last crash/burn/reinstall episode, and after updating the BIOS on my HP Envy laptop, I have Windows 8 and I.E. 10 running really sweet. I'd hate to do anything to change that.

I feel bad for you Snake, I wish there was something I could say or do at this point, but I'm out of ideas. If all your connections are good, and Windows does not recognize the drive as a system device, I don't know what else you can do. Maybe another forum member can come up with something for you to try at this point.

PiccoG - Hello and welcome to the forum. If you have a system restore point that was created prior to your installation of the Autodesk products, it would be much easier and faster to use that to restore your system rather than reinstalling Windows.

Hello Brad - Glad to see you're still hanging in there. Sorry to hear things aren't working out for you. I took a look at the Advanced section, on the next attempt you might want to try three things: Exclude VSS writers, Enable file write caching, and Ignore bad sectors. Before you try the above, I want you to try one thing. Plug in the Toshiba and take a look at the contents of the drive. See if C: and Recovery are actually there. Then click C: and check to see if all your system folders are there. It should look exactly the same as what is on your hard drive. If not, then something went wrong in the cloning process. Did you try using different settings in BIOS for the boot order? The Toshiba might not be detected as a USB Hard Drive, but as another USB device. Try using anything related to USB, whether it's usb hard drive, usb cd-rom, usb dvd-rom, or simply usb device. Anything mentioning USB. If all of this fails, I am thinking that it comes down to one of three things: Your BIOS does not recognize the Toshiba as a bootable device, the Toshiba was never designed to be a bootable device, or there is no master boot record installed in the first part of the drive. You won't be able to do anything about the first two items, but you might be able to fix the third. Let me see what I can come up with to check if this is the case and what to do to fix it. Also, in your next post, give me the model name and/or model number for the Toshiba, and for the Asus motherboard as well. I want to visit their websites to see if I can find anything that will help at this point. Are you beginning to see why I came up with plan B? Sometimes things don't go exactly as you planned, and you have to have a way out.

Aside from the fact they have huge claws, sharp teeth, and smell like a fish cannery, I'd have no problem at all.

Hello Snake and welcome to the forum. If you are trying to retrieve information from the drive, do not format it! Have you tried either Verbatim's or Seagate's support websites for help? Some sites are pretty good when it comes to diagnosing hardware/firmware/driver problems, you may find something you have overlooked. Does Windows recognize the drive with the same drive letter it has used all along, or did that change when you removed the drive from it's housing and connected it directly? What was previously recognized as a USB device is now a SATA device, and Windows may have gotten confused and assigned a new drive letter, or no drive letter at all. This could lead to problems as far as recognizing the partitions and accessing the data on the drive. From what I understand, Recuva needs a drive letter to recognize a drive or partition. Finally, you may have to accept the fact that the drive has died. Sometimes they will give you a sign that there are problems, and other times they just fail without warning. Years ago, I had a CD-ROM drive that was fine one minute, and dead the next time I tried to use it. Windows would still recognize it when I inserted a CD, but it would not spin up. I took it out of the tower, opened the case, checked all the connectors, put everything back together and still nothing. I can only assume the motor had failed. If the information you have is important to you, take it to a shop and have someone look at it. A good tech can probably tell you if it is salvagable and what it will cost. Edit: If Windows recognizes the drive with a drive letter, have you tried running chkdsk from the command prompt? http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true Note: You will have to right click the command prompt and select "Run as Administrator" to use chkdsk In your case you might want to try: "chkdsk x: /f /r" (no quotes) where x is the drive letter, /f fixes errors on the disk, /r recovers data from bad sectors; note that a space is needed before each / mark

Look to the slowest piece of hardware in the system: your hard drive. That's the real bottleneck in the process. Allocating more and more memory to do the job is offset to a large degree by how fast you can access the data on the drive. Eventually, adding more memory does nothing to increase the overall speed of the process.

Number 6 seems pretty gruesome - the only thing worse than being clawed to death by a bunch of cats would be getting eaten alive by a bunch of cats.

Ellin - I'm sorry to hear about your problems. It took me a while to read everything, since it is split between two different threads. I suggest you follow Hazelnut's advice, and do as Alan_B and Andavari have recommended: throw everything you can at it. Scanning with one or two virus/malware scanners is not enough. I found this out the hard way when I tried to remove ransomware from my brother's laptop. I used the portable version of a popular malware removal product to remove this problem, then scanned with two other products and got a negative result. I thought all was well and returned the laptop to my brother. Two days later he brought it back to me stating it would not boot properly, and I found it would loop from startup to startup repair, back to startup, and so on. The solution was to use a portable drive wiper to wipe C:/ partition completely clean and re-install Windows from the recovery partition. Very, very time consuming, and since my brother is not a wiz at doing backups, he lost some important files. So throw everything you can at the problem now, and be sure to back up your important data while you can. Edit: My approach to registry cleaners: it always seems like a good idea until it turns on you and bites you in the hindquarters. Always, always, always back up the registry before you use registry cleaning software. Another lesson I learned the hard way.

That's right Brad. Inelligent/Verify should be set in both the Cloning section and the Compression section. Also, and this is really important, in the Compression section, set Compression to "None" - you do not want to compress your data. I think this is why your first attempt failed. I missed this because I assumed any settings related to Cloning would be in that section and nowhere else, my mistake.

Thanks Alan, your input is appreciated as always, and indirectly, you might have just uncovered the problem . I checked this and found that under the Cloning section, Intelligent Sector Copy and Verify File System are set by default. Forensic Copy (exact copy) is the optional setting and enabled by the user. Unless Brad changed this, the defaults should be in place. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile checking. Also, under the Compression section, I found Intelligent Sector Copy is enabled by default. HOWEVER, medium compression is the default setting for the compression level and no compression is an option to be chosen by the user. This slipped by me and is probably the real problem here. So Brad, you have to select "Other Tasks", then "Edit Defaults", then "Compression", and select "None"(no compression) before trying another clone. What you have on the Toshiba now is not readable by the system during boot. While you're in there, go to "Cloning" and double check what I mentioned in the first paragraph.

All right Brad, don't give up yet. First, go here http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50081.aspx and reread the instructions and watch the video. Maybe you'll find something you missed or did wrong. Make sure that you are cloning and not imaging the drive. I am concerned about the 10GB of data that appears to be missing, but keep in mind that Macrium copies only your data and ignores things like the paging file and hibernation area on the disk. Any freespace that is mixed in with your data is probably not copied either. Also, be sure to try different settings in the boot order in BIOS. Remember what I said previously, your BIOS may "see" these as two different kinds of hardware. Your BIOS boot order might have two or more entries for USB devices. The setting that worked for the USB stick might not work for the Toshiba. If you try everything above, and nothing works, just as an experiment, try cloning just C: partition by itself and see if that boots. I don't like the idea of omitting the recovery partition, but it might be interfering in the boot process.

I think you should shrink C: just a little more, down to 280GB (286720MB). That way recovery plus C: should fit on the Toshiba with a little room to spare. Remember to move recovery first, keeping it at the front of the drive. Edit: Taking a break for dinner, I'll check back in 7:30 - 8:00PM to see how things are going.

O.K. Brad - The purpose of the memory stick is to be able to install Windows 7 from scratch. Using Rufus makes the stick bootable, so you can use it without having an operating system installed on the drive. What you did was start the installer from Windows, but it is really meant to work independently from Windows. What you should do is shut down the machine, boot into BIOS, and change the boot order so you are booting from the USB stick itself, not from your hard drive. If the installer starts, then you have what you need to do a clean install, and you know what to do to kill the install. I only wanted you to have this in case you ran into problems either cloning your operating system to the Toshiba, or from the Toshiba back to the new drive. Also, do not use that stick for anything else, just hang onto it in case you need it. Get another stick if you need to copy other data. Remember, the process is not over until you have everything from the two Toshibas either cloned or copied to your new hard drive, and you are sure that everything works and none of your data is missing. Do not erase or format your old hard drive, either of the Toshibas, or the USB stick with Windows 7 until you are absolutely sure.

I'm inclined to think that they are two different versions of the Google Toolbar. Or an earlier and later version perhaps. Maybe I'm trying too hard to be logical here, but if they were exactly the same, then ESET either should have flagged both, or ignored both.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old familiar carols play And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth Good-will to men Have a wonderful Christmas everyone. - Derek

According to kroozer's results, ESET is the one that consistently flags the Google Tool Bar installer as potential malware. I decided to go to the source, Google, and download the installer by itself ( filename: GoogleToolbarInstaller_en32_signed.exe). Here are the results when running this file through the same three security sites: http://r.virscan.org/report/9e91214349911d3e0b7d33081d141a0d.html 2 out of 37 ClamAV and F-Prot http://virusscan.jotti.org/en/scanresult/05b8b27ec3e641b9db05cc45ce79beee8758532b/d8c8a77353ca27081765560c2b6d7a7338f77468 1 out of 23 ClamAV https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/1f85e871db078e45a653ba98dd30c19500191421a7060c4609dd5fa407d82bc5/analysis/1387684029/ 0 out of 49 So one version of the Google Toolbar Installer, the one that it is bundled with the CCleaner Installer, is detected only by ESET as malware. But the Google Toolbar Installer, downloaded directly from Google, is ignored by ESET but detected by ClamAV twice and F-Prot once as malware. Anyone care to explain this? It certainly is puzzling to me. kroozer - I hope you don't mind me editing your post, I just wanted to clarify things for everyone.

O.K. Brad, I think I found another way to download the ISO a little quicker. I'll send you a P.M. explaining what to do.

Running chkdsk will take a long time on a 1TB drive, and will put somewhat of a strain on the drive. If you're worried about it, run Acronis first, and see if the condition of the drive has stayed the same or gotten worse. If you're concerned about the drive failing, then don't do it. I will look for another way to download the ISO for plan B. It will take me some time. I think if you proceed with the cloning process, and it works, you will have the peace of mind knowing that your operating system, Windows, is off the old drive and safe on the Toshiba. Then you can go back and run chkdsk without worrying about the old drive failing and leaving you stranded.

Brad - Sorry to hear about your problems downloading the image, I forgot to mention it's 3GB, and I forget not everyone has a high speed cable or fiber optic connection. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but if it's too much trouble for you, then don't waste any more time with it, just proceed with the original plan. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find another source to download the image file. I'm glad to hear you figured out how to change the boot order in BIOS, that is key to booting the Toshiba once you finish cloning the recovery and C: partitions. That way you can continue to use your computer until you get a new internal drive. Did you read the instructions, watch the video, and try Macrium yet? Once you have that done, it's just a matter of powering down, disconnecting the internal drive, connecting the Toshiba, then boot, enter BIOS and change the boot order. Once you save and exit, you'll find out if the Toshiba boots Windows or not. Also, I forgot to mention, don't do anything with the old internal drive until you have everything from both Toshibas either cloned or copied to your new internal drive, and you're 100% certain that everything is there and everything works. Your old drive isn't dead yet, and it can serve as an additional backup to the Toshiba just in case you overlooked something when you originally copied D: partition from the old drive.

You're absolutely right mta. It took a while for me to find the article http://pc.answers.com/microsoft-windows/how-the-pros-recover-passwords-using-ophcrack and reread it. My mistake, Ophcrack deals with Windows user accounts, nothing else.

I haven't used it myself, so I can't vouch for it's effectiveness, but I remember reading about Ophcrack being useful in recovering lost/forgotten passwords for Windows user accounts. It may or may not work in your case, but it might be worth a try.